With the Republicans choosing to give money to the extremely wealthy, the American Republic will not have the funds it needs in order to provide for its goods and services. The long-term deficit they have created through their extreme tax bill is estimated to being nearly 1.5 trillion dollars.
When the infrastructure, which has long shown the extreme need for repair, becomes a central concern for the government, they will not have the money to pay for it. This, of course, will not bother them, because their plan is not to pay for it, but to turn the public good into a private one, selling off the infrastructure to the highest bidder. The public, of course, will find that they will be the ones burdened by the sale because they will be required to pay ever-increasing toll fees by the corporate powers which take over the nation’s infrastructure. This will provide the government a short-term gain, but it will lead to a long-term deficit in funds as the funds they got from the sale are used up. In order to recoup the money which will be lost, they will have to add extra taxes, such as increasing the federal gas tax, which will once again cause a proportionally greater burden on the poor and middle classes.
Whatever the government gets from its privatization of public goods and services, the people will not gain much from it. They might get better roads, but the expense will be greater than before. What they once could ride on for free will become an expensive nightmare which they cannot afford (as the general income of the American people is not rising, but declining, and yet the debt they have to pay is rising).
The American Government selling off its assets to the highest bidder will not be with the infrastructure alone. The government will feel itself forced to let the rich loot more public goods in order to manage the economy because they have turned away from expecting those who have the means and resources to help pay for it. This will, in turn, will continue the integration of government with business, where the end-game is a fascist system which will be hard to demolish once it is in place. We are not there yet, but we are coming close to it, and the policies of the Republicans which help the rich get richer without any expectations or social burdens placed upon their wealth will speed up the process. Certainly, they will try to cover up what they are doing; they might even try to issue more “tax cuts” which might look like they are good for the middle and poorer classes, but they will overcome any deficit with “user fees” which will take far more money from those who need it than they will gain with any “tax cut,” making the whole thing a charade. Such tax cuts will likely be short term, while the user fees and hidden taxes will last, making sure the public will be the play thing of the private corporation which have bought out the government.
The American Dream, even though it was faulty and full of promises which could not be kept, will be dead. The rich will have taken over and turned the rest into the poor which it regulates and controls. They will do all they can to keep the money with themselves (as they fight each other to get more of the loot), making sure any possibility of upward mobility of the non-rich will be stopped. Through money, they will be able to dictate and control the United States; the government will sell itself out to the highest bidder, making laws and regulations which favor the rich as the only option.
This doomsday scenario has been long in the making. The Republicans have long used the short-sighted nature of the American public against them. For the recent tax heist, they think the small, short term gains will fool the people, and they sadly, might be right; the fact that whatever tax relief the middle class and poor will receive quickly vanishes will not matter during the next election, because the expiration date will not have been met. The only reason, it would seem, that there is any tax cut for anyone other than the rich is for this one reason, so the Republicans can claim to have given a tax cut for all, hoping that the public will not be able to see into the not-too-distant future when it will be taken away. Even if the Republicans fail and they are cast out of office, the long-term effects of their plan will continue, and of course, as is normal, when the expenses come, they will be putting the blame on the Democrats, and not the plan which they put into place.
Sadly, it seems that the pain and sorrow which is to come cannot be avoided. By accepting the promises of greed over the common good, the United States has created its own hell-to-come. The rich might think they will be able to ride through the wave of destruction coming in the wake of their policies, but history shows, the rich can only do that for so long before the tide of history takes them down as well. The words of Jesus concerning the rich are universal:
But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger. Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep (Lk. 6:24-5 RSV).
While there is an eschatological reading of these woes, as those who continue to embrace their greed will not be able to enter into the kingdom of God (cf. 1 Cor. 6:10), they also reveal a truth about what happens to the rich in history. They will find the wheel of fortune turning against them, and the judgment for their evil deeds will be upon them and the society which accepted their evil. They might rejoice today, but the end, they shall have to face the judgment of the people they oppressed. That will indeed be a day of woe.
[Image=Pennsylvania Turnpike ramp to US 1 in Bensalem Township byOtto Yamamoto from NY, NY, USA [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons]
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